Kindertransports from Genoa, Italy to the UK
Small Kindertransports consisting of 5-10 mainly German and Austrian Jewish refugee children left Genoa in 1939 and 1940 for the UK. Genoa was a departure point and transit hub for thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution, but its Kindertransport history is less well-known. Genoa was a gateway for travel to British Mandate Palestine, the Americas, and Shanghai. Yet with the help of Dutch ships such as the M/V Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, which later became an Allied troop ship during the Second World War, Jewish refugee children were also able to escape to the UK. While the children concerned were German and Austrian, we nevertheless need to recognise Italy’s role. For example, in one of the reports of the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany (MCC) it is clearly stated that there were several transports from Italy. Even though few children arrived from this nation, their stories and the Italian port need to be brought back into our British memory of this historical event.
It begins with a list of 17 Jewish refugees who arrived in the UK on 10th March 1939. 5 out of the 17 are listed as being under the auspices of the MCC. The Southampton port medical officer, Maurice Williams sent a letter to Dr. Stock at the Ministry of Health in Whitehall, London to say that the refugees had arrived and were medically examined before they disembarked the ship – all were found healthy. On the second page of the letter is the list, but the list only has the first initials and surnames of the passengers. So, there was a little bit of detective work needed to find out who they actually were/ are. I found all their names as well as their 1939 register entries, enemy alien files, and naturalisation documents. I even found that one person had tragically died in an air raid in 1944. It looks like other passengers may have later left for countries such as Cuba, Argentina, Australia, America, and Canada.
8 of the refugees were girls and 9 were boys. There was one 8-year-old, one 9-year-old, one 11-year-old, three 13-year-olds, three 14-year-olds, three 15-year-olds, one 16-year-old, and three 17-year-olds. 12 of them have addresses in London, Oxford, and Folkestone but 5 of them are listed with Bloomsbury House. Only 1 of the children seem to have been born in Italy – she was born in Milan but had Austrian heritage. Others were born in places like Berlin, Frankfurt, and Vienna. Thanks to the help of World Jewish Relief, we’ve managed to find some of their registration files and case files. We can see the children’s Kindertransport numbers which are in the 3000s and 4000s, but we also see them in the 600s which may suggest that they’d tried to escape earlier on but were delayed.
In February and April 1940, the German-Jewish Children’s Aid (GJCA) who were based in America and the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde who were the Jewish community in Vienna are writing letters about 10 children who were travelling on the United States Line, via the S.S.Manhattan (the ship which had brought Kinder from Hamburg to Southampton in 1939), from Genoa on 11th March 1940. The GJCA state that it must be understood that the risk up to the time of the arrival of the children in New York has to be borne by the parents or by the Jewish community in Vienna. It was also important that there was an escort who could accompany the children as close to the border as possible, and arrangements needed to be made for an organisation in Italy to meet them at the border and see that they were placed on board the ship. It was assumed that the Comunita Israelitiche Italiane in Genoa (A. Leoni) would help because they helped with transports from Berlin.
We also know that Norman Bentwich was writing letters in 1939 about Jewish male adult refugees who were leaving the Kitchener Camp in the UK for Genoa – they were aiming to journey to Australia. He states that they were travelling on the ship called the Esquilino.
At the end of March 1939 after the Kindertransport children had arrived in the UK from this port there were newspaper stories just 2 weeks later about how a British ship called the Burrington Combe which was carrying 80 Spanish women and refugee children was forced off its route in a storm. The refugees were refused permission to land in Genoa. The ship had sailed from Oran and was heading for Marseilles. So, while Genoa was a point of exit for many people it does have a complex history as it also denied entry for others.
While there were no Kindertransports for Italian Jewish children to the UK, Italian ports were nevertheless used in the Kindertransports to the UK. We know that some of the Kinder’s parents later fled to Italy and that Italy would be one of the countries where former Kinder were sent during the war when they were fighting in the Allied Forces. Italy became a place of resistance as some of the Kinder later joined the Jewish Brigade. The Kinder and the Kindertransport are part of Italian history and memory of the Holocaust as well as British because their stories are directly and indirectly connected to Italian soil either by routes of escape or routes of war.
